Exclusive: Yuja finds another agent
NewsHaving waltzed out of Intermusica, where staff could never do enough for her, our heroine has finally sealed a deal with Opus3, which is where she started out many walkouts and mergers ago.
We hear she will be looked after from November by Philippa Cole, who is based in Chicago.
Let’s see how that pans out.
UPDATE: Also joining Opus3 is the recent Operalia winner Kathleen O’Mara.
Sounds like being a liability. An artist who wants MORE? BETTER? Maybe being treated BETTER and with more égards? Or having to pay less percentages over the fees? One wonders what all these agencies have done wrong, considering the success and the fame this lady has acquired over the years.
That’s an interesting point. Wang was definitely a name in 2018, but I can barely move for seeing her today, so her previous agency must have done something right!
Considering she’s a pianist that one could easily live without, I’d say yes, they have done well.
What’s it all about? There’s very little of any profound musical value…
In my opinion – based solely on recordings – she is absolutely brilliant and devastatingly superficial, a matter of personality. Like a present wrapped into fantastic, very promising paper which on opening shows a very minor contribution. It made me think of those luxury restaurants with glamorous menus including descriptions of poetic nature, and then you get a hughe plate with some very minor blurb in the middle, like the decorations on the table rather than a real dish.
And then I leave unmentioned her obsession with fashion, which gives away the whole enterprise.
Ms Wang is a typical phenomenon of modern times: everything on the outside, and a void on the inside.
These are perceptive comments with which I mostly agree. I’ve seen her in live performance and found the raunchy livery very distracting.
Wang has dazzling virtuosity; there cannot be any doubt about that. But during the course of keyboard music history some of the greatest composers were NOT themselves dazzling keyboardists (Schubert springs to mind). There has to be something else as well and I feel Wang lacks this “little something extra” (A Star is Born). And I appreciate the fact that a large number of people don’t agree with this.
You are correct, a large number of people don’t agree with you. And your comments about her and her looks (along with Mr. Borstlap’s), only sound smart and rhetorically high-minded. Frankly, you sound bitter and empty.
…she fills the seats…that is the bottom line!
Yuja Wang is not a composer, and whether composers are/were dazzling keyboardists is hardly on point here.
“absolutely brilliant and devastatingly superficial”, and not a word more is needed. Even the apparel can be ignored.
What do you mean by ‘superficial’? it’s a word that strikes me as meaningless in this context. I can’t stand pianists who emote unrhythmically all over the place while making silly faces.
Superficiality has many faces, distorted or not.
Then you must not have heard her much. Her recent performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto was sublime. You can find it on YouTube.
She can definitely live without *you* though. It’s getting harder and harder to get a decent ticket of her concert where I live unless you want to buy a big subscription before single ticket sales open.
OK, fair enough, I will listen to that Beethoven 4th.
I think Ms Wang would agree with me that sometimes the concept of ‘profound musical value’ is nothing more than a pain in the posterior. She plays in a singularly straightforward manner in a way that is simply unavailable to lesser mortals. Often that gets to the heart of things rather better than those who wish everything to be ‘deeply moving’, a rather simple-minded approach to music, which is all sorts of things to all sorts of people.
‘Expressive’ does not mean larmoyant or hysterical.
With those sunglasses, is she channeling Audrey Hepburn in “Two for the Road?”
I hear that she has also taken to wearing clothes. Can anyone confirm? It must be quite recent.
My fly on the wall informs me that she is preparing a great surprise, first cladding more and more, so that the sudden revelation will be all the more sensational.
Mäkelä stans never fail to sound stupid.
What is stans?
It’s a slang neologism combining “fan” and “stalker.” PS: It isn’t a complimentary descriptive.
I love Yuja’s playing, and find the generally nasty and snide remarks here baffling. Why the hate?
Envy. Because she acts free and unbothered, and skills other strive for but can never achieve, apparently(!) come to her with ease. (If she actually feels that way is a completely different matter.)
Jealousy. Pure Jealousy.
Good. She doesn’t need an agency that is constantly leaking information to our esteemed host.
“she will be looked after … by Philippa Cole, who is based in Chicago.”
Hmmm, who else will be based in Chicago and can look after her?
What makes you think the new MD will be based in Chicago?? He will jet in, do his concerts, then jet out. No difference to what Muti had been doing.
Nice Lamborghini SUV.
Isn’t it disturbing when perfect supermarket tomatoes never taste of anything when you eat them at home…
Yet another agent who can claim “I managed Yuja Wang” in their obituary. Best of luck, Philippa!
In my experience musicians reserve their harshest musical criticism for performers that are wealthier and better looking than them.
An artist has every right to chose her / his agent. Knowing what agents can be like and how they can do the dirty on artists (I known from personal experience) then a performer has every right to get the best deal.JTS
No performer ever knows what the ‘best deal’ actually is, until they work with an agent. And they can only find-out after at least one season since concerts are planned so much in advance.